Ghost Flight

79

Jaeger powered down his satphone. The data-burst message he’d just received read: Col. Evandro confirms preparing sanitised LZ. ETA at LZ 1630 Zulu. CE sending air escort to cover remainder of journey.

He checked his watch. It was 0945 Zulu. They had six hours and forty-five minutes’ flight time ahead of them before they put down on whatever part of Cachimbo airport Brazil’s Director of Special Forces had prepared for them. By ‘sanitised’, Evandro meant an area where Jaeger and crew would be free to fully decontaminate themselves, and, in due course, the warplane. He was even sending some kind of an airborne escort to shepherd them in – most likely a pair of fast jets.

It was all working out beautifully.

For the next hour or so they steadily gained altitude, as the Airlander climbed to her 10,000-foot cruise ceiling. The higher they got, the thinner the atmosphere, and the more fuel-efficient the airship became – which was crucial for ensuring she had the range to reach Cachimbo.

Finally, they broke free of the cloud cover, sunlight streaming in through the cockpit windows. It was now that Jaeger could get a proper look at what an awesome spectacle they made – a space-age airship and the sleek Second World War aircraft clamped beneath her, flying as one.

With the rounded shape of the Airlander’s undersurface, the Ju 390’s wingtips stuck out a good fifty feet to either side, tapering off to narrow knife-edge points. Jaeger figured the wings would be producing their own aerodynamic lift as the Airlander pushed ahead at approaching 200 kph, helping the airship to speed them to their destination.

With Narov deep in her documents, and Dale filming for all he was worth, Jaeger found himself with little to do but admire the view. A blanket of fluffy white cloud stretched below them as far as the horizon, the blue heavens opening wide above. For the first time in what felt like an age, he had a moment to reflect on all that had happened, and on what might lie ahead.

Narov and her shock revelations – that she had known and worked with his grandfather; that she’d been treated as family almost – needed some serious investigating. It opened up a whole world of uncertainties. Once they had boots on the ground at Cachimbo – and were truly safe, as she had put it – he needed to have a long chat with Irina Narov. But at 20,000 feet and through radios and respirators was hardly a very private or fitting way to do so.

Jaeger’s priority number one had to be to work out how exactly to deal with the Ju 390 and her cargo. They were riding on a Nazi warplane stuffed full of Hitler’s war secrets, painted in US Air Force markings, discovered within what was arguably Brazilian territory, but could equally be Bolivian or Peruvian, and retrieved by an international expedition team.

The question was – who had the foremost claim upon her?

Jaeger figured the likeliest scenario was that a whole alphabet soup of intelligence agencies would descend upon Cachimbo once the discovery became known to them. Colonel Evandro was a smart operator, and he was sure to have chosen a part of the vast air complex set well away from watching eyes – the public and the press.

In all likelihood, those intelligence agencies would demand – and get – a media blackout, until they had assessed what version of the story to release to the world’s public. In Jaeger’s experience, that was generally how these things were done.

The American government would want to completely sanitise its role in sponsoring such a flight, as would those of her allies – most notably Great Britain – who doubtless had been party to it.

As Narov had intimated, at least some of the technology held in the Ju 390’s hold was very likely still classified, and it would doubtless need to remain so. It would have to be written out of whatever statement was released to the world’s public.

But Jaeger could well foresee the kind of story that would eventually hit the press.

Kammler and his cronies would be portrayed as trying to save the best of their technology from the ashes of the Third Reich, acting independently of the Allies. Something like that anyway. As for Wild Dog Media’s TV extravaganza – Dale was filming away like a madman, aware that he had the story of his life.

As a gripping adventure-mystery yarn that would out-box-office Indiana Jones, Jaeger figured this was about as good as it got. He didn’t much fancy playing the Harrison Ford character, but Dale did have a serious quantity of interview material with him in the can.

What had been filmed had been filmed, and Jaeger could see a sanitised version of the TV series – one glossing over at least some of the aircraft’s contents, not to mention those US Air Force markings – going out on the air. Indeed, he figured it would make for gripping viewing.

The one other thing that would doubtless need to be edited out of Dale’s film was the Dark Force that had been hunting them. There had been enough drama with ‘lost tribes’ and the Lost World of the jungle to contend with – both of which were far more palatable to a family TV audience.

Jaeger figured that the Dark Force would have to call off the hunt now – the prize having fallen out of their grasp. But given that they had at least one Predator and a heavily armed ground unit at their disposal, he didn’t doubt that the force was some US-generated black agency, one that had gone rogue.

When you sanctioned that many clandestine agencies, giving them total power and zero accountability, you had to expect ‘blowback’, as they called it in the trade.

At some point, somewhere, you would lose all control, and one of those agencies would step right over the line.